


sin & misery

by SyntheticRevenge



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: (always a fun tag to throw in), Dr Carmilla's A+ Parenting, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Non-Linear Narrative, Patricide, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:40:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26743759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SyntheticRevenge/pseuds/SyntheticRevenge
Summary: “Boring,” Carmilla says, and Jonny stops mid-sentence, blinking.“Excuse me?” he asks, offended and confused.“You’re excused,” Carmilla says, crossing her arms. “Tell it better. More exciting. All this fucking exposition--who gives a shit? We get it. Your father was a gambling alcoholic who beat you, and you were such a good boy. That’s every story. What’s different about you?”“I don’t--”“It doesn’t have to be true, Jonny. Nothing about you has to be true. It just has to be compelling. You’re going to be alive a long time, and if you keep holding yourself to the truth, it’s going to get boring and sad and horrid pretty quick.”(or, Carmilla teaches Jonny how to tell a good story)
Relationships: Dr Carmilla & Jonny d'Ville
Comments: 9
Kudos: 86





	sin & misery

**Author's Note:**

> I swear to god I have feelings about every Mechanism. I promise I do. It's just that the Jonny feelings are the only ones that come with even moderately coherent ideas. This is a super experimental format for me, I hope it works and that you enjoy it!

Carmilla slams back her whiskey, sets the glass down, and puts her chin in her hand. She eyes Jonny, sharp nails drumming against her cheekbone, and sighs. 

Jonny’s drunk. Has been for the five years since he left One-Eyed Jack’s burning behind him. No point in anything else. If he drinks long and hard enough, maybe one day, he’ll stop having those stupid swells of--of  _ emotion _ . He’s not supposed to  _ feel _ anymore, and he resents Carmilla for the fact that he does, and she lied. He wouldn’t have let her rip his heart out if he thought he’d still have all this shit to carry around with him.

She won’t stop  _ looking _ at him, or through him, or--he can’t really tell, his eyes won’t quite focus, but he’s annoyed all the same.

“What,” he spits, and Carmilla cocks her head, looking at him from a different angle, which just makes him angrier, stovetop-metal heart bringing his blood to a boil. “I said fucking  _ what _ ?”

“Tell me a story,” she says, crossing her arms and leaning back. “I’m bored. I need something new to tell.”

“I don’t know any stories you haven’t told me,” Jonny says, flatly, and it’s true. Hasn’t done much of anything that would be worth telling since New Texas. Hasn’t met anyone of note, hasn’t--it’s all the same.

“You know your own, don’t you?”

“ _ You _ know mine.”

“I know the edges of it,” she says. “Fill it in. Tell me about Jonny Vangelis.”

“Fine,” he says, sighing, cuz fuckit. Why not. He doesn’t have anything better to do, and he might as well delay his inevitable nightly trip to the bathroom floor, choking on his own vomit for the--well, he doesn’t know how many times he’s drunk himself to death, but it’s a lot, probably.

So he takes a breath, stares at the table, and starts.

*

Jonny Vangelis wasn’t much of anything. Didn’t really know what he was meant for. His mother was a decent tailor, and she wanted him to take over for her, decades down the line, but he never had the patience or the hand-eye coordination for sewing, and she gave up on that pretty quick.

His father, Billy, well, he was a gambler and a drunk and awful at both, and everyone in New Texas figured Jonny would just follow in his father’s footsteps. What else were the Vangelis boys good at, or for, after all? Drinking, inadvisably procreating, and losing all their money to One-Eyed Jack--that was the family trade.

Everyone said Jonny was a good boy, though. He was softer-spoken than his father had been, sweet to animals, decent to people who deserved decency, and rough with those who didn’t.  _ A big heart _ , they said. And it felt pretty big back then, a huge, fleshy compass in his chest, pointing right and wrong.

When he tried to talk Billy out of betting their dog on a losing hand (she was a good dog, diligent hunter, all that—and she was the last thing other than the house Billy had left to give that was his), Billy backhanded him into a table in front of the entire casino, and he’d felt a swell of anger and  _ shame _ on his father’s behalf, overwhelming and painful. It was supposed to be a show of strength, maybe, a stab at impressing the room, showing off how callous he could be to his own kin if they questioned him. Came off pathetic, instead, and exposed a weak spot.

At the time, Jonny hadn’t noticed the way Jack’s eye gleamed as he handed him a cold glass to press against the bruise blooming on his face, and a few shots of whiskey for good measure. That was the kind of detail you paint into a memory after the fact, whether or not it actually happened.

Billy lost the dog, obviously, and the--

*

“Boring,” Carmilla says, and Jonny stops mid-sentence, blinking.

“Excuse me?” he asks, offended and confused.

“You’re excused,” Carmilla says, crossing her arms. “Tell it better. More exciting. All this fucking exposition--who gives a shit? We get it. Your father was a gambling alcoholic who beat you, and you were  _ such a good boy _ . That’s  _ every  _ story. What’s different about  _ you _ ?”

“I don’t--”

“It doesn’t have to be true, Jonny. Nothing about you has to be true. It just has to be compelling. You’re going to be alive a  _ long _ time, and if you keep holding yourself to the truth, it’s going to get boring and sad and horrid pretty quick.”

“So...so you’re telling me to lie about my life,” Jonny says, cocking his head. “I thought you wanted--”

“A  _ story _ .”

“Fuck,  _ fine _ ,” Jonny spits. “I’ll tell you a  _ story _ .”

*

Billy Vangelis bet the family dog on a shit hand in a low-stakes game of New Texas Hold ‘Em against a bunch of fucking drunks, and lost it, and his son Jonny didn’t take too kindly to that.

Not kindly at all. He got hammered for the first time in his seventeen years of existence--he’d been a so-called  _ good kid _ before that, at least, that’s what everyone thought, but who knows,  _ really _ \--and instead of just walking it off and going home and giving his father the silent treatment like an  _ actual _ good kid would do, he pinched the nose his father did the courtesy of breaking for him, stole Billy’s pistol out of the back of his belt, and reeled out into the night.

He didn’t set out to kill anyone, not  _ really _ , he did have the pretense and expectation of having a good heart hanging over him, and it was a useful image to keep up. It got him into people’s homes, trusted with their valuables, and never suspected when things went missing. If word got around that he’d suddenly become a killer, that semi-comfortable life building up independence from his father might disappear.

But he was angry and drunk and that  _ good heart _ was getting calcified and incinerated by the second. The streets were dusty and dead, like always, and there was no one around to take all the feeling exploding in his ribs out on, but he wandered anyway, like a vengeful ghost.

He--

*

“Let me guess,” Carmilla says, sighing, audibly bored. “You blacked out, woke up, someone in town was dead of a gunshot wound, you did it. Someone saw you, or maybe not, but either way, it gets traced back to you.”

“...oh,  _ fuck _ off,” Jonny says.

“Start it from a more interesting spot. We don’t need all the backstory.”

“I thought you said--”

“I said tell a story. Stories don’t need endless exposition to be good, do they? Do  _ you _ like it when you learn every fucking detail about a character? No. It makes them shitty and boring. You should be a  _ mystery _ .”

“I don’t feel like the things you’re saying are as universal as you think they are,” Jonny says, squinting. Carmilla just shrugs and rolls her eyes. 

“Question me all you want. You’re still telling a boring story.”

“I don’t  _ like _ you.”

“I don’t need you to.”

“Fucking  _ touche _ ,” Jonny says, saluting her. “Right, then.”

*

One-Eyed Jack was a notorious bastard and cheat, but the only people he fucked over, generally, according to public opinion, deserved it. He took everything from the Vangelis family, but nothing that wasn’t offered to him by its shithole of a poor excuse of a patriarch.

Said patriarch, name of Billy--he was a wreck of a man, and his son Jonny wasn’t shaping up any better, but who wants to hear about  _ that _ ? No, this is the real story, isn’t it? What should it be about? What lie gives birth to a legend?

Fine. What about this one?

Billy ran up his fair share of debt. Most of it he could pay off, one way or another. Stolen goods, oddjobs, violence for hire. More often than not, though, as time went on, he was too fucked up to do much of anything that was even remotely useful to Jack.

Now, Jack, he was a smart man, and Billy was a problem he needed solved. Too many decades of bullshit. He’d seen Billy with his son. He’d seen the pain the two of them held between them, and he had exactly the right type of salt to pour in  _ that _ wound.

He bought Jonny a drink, bought him into a game, bought his soul with a few kind words. Beaten dogs look for outstretched hands to nuzzle into wherever they can find them, and Jonny was no different. He fell for it, and hard.

Jack made him feel useful. He could do Jack a favor  _ and _ help his father. Attention and praise and love would  _ abound _ . Just one job.

One job turned into several jobs, and Jonny saw it coming when finally Jack put a hand on his shoulder and told him it was time. Jonny didn’t even have to ask  _ what _ it was time for, just slammed a few shots in response, loaded his pistol, and stalked home, heart surprisingly still in his chest.

Jonny shot his father between the shoulderblades. It wasn’t fair. Not even close. But then again, Billy Vangelis had always been on the wrong side of a pair of loaded dice, and getting killed by his own son was no different. Just another thing lost to One-Eyed Jack. 

The house  _ always _ wins.

Jonny was ready to die, after that, at the age of--

*

“No,” Carmilla says, and Jonny almost spits.

“I will fucking kill you, I swear,” he says, and she laughs.

“I’d like to see you try.”

“What  _ now _ .”

“No one cares how you felt, Jonny,” she says. “You were doing well, but--cut the suicidal bullshit. You  _ didn’t _ kill yourself, so why does it matter if you wanted to or how old you were?”

“Can I  _ finish _ ?”

“Sure. Do better.”

*

The house  _ always _ wins.

Jonny lost himself in a blood-drunk whiskey-drunk pain-drunk haze that didn’t lift until he found his chin in a sharp-nailed hand, dark eyes appraising him. He felt a bullet in his side, but had no recollection of how it got there. 

Someone he couldn’t see--didn’t  _ care _ about seeing--asked him if he wanted to live forever, far,  _ far _ away from New Texas. Maybe he didn’t hear the ‘living forever’ part. Maybe he just didn’t give a single, solitary fuck. Maybe leaving the planet was worth whatever it cost.

For whatever fucking stupid reason, he said yes.

They used to say Jonny Vangelis had a good heart. Now he has an immaculate one, infallible and ever-true and impossible to stop. 

And as for One-Eyed Jack, well. There’s no house to win anymore. 

*

“Not bad,” Carmilla says. “Could use some practice and editing and maybe a harmonica solo, but not bad.”

“Sorry, what was the point of that?”

“If you can’t mythologize yourself, this all gets fairly fucking unbearable,” she says, lightly. “I’m trying to help.”

“Yeah, fantastic job, thanks,” Jonny says, flatly.

“Another thing--you might want to consider changing that  _ name _ ,” Carmilla says. “Jonny Vangelis...it’s a bit much, isn’t it?”

“Is it?”

“Do you really want to carry your father’s name around with you?” Carmilla asks, drumming her fingers against her face, and when she puts it like  _ that _ .

“Write my own story, make up my own name?” Jonny asks, crossing his arms.

“Melt away and become fiction,” Carmilla says, smirking. “Who could hope for more?”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading <3 All feedback is appreciated.  
> Find me on tumblr @witnesstotheend


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